18 January 2009

Too Real Tragedy

I was sitting in my living room today reading the Sunday paper when a couple of things caught my eye. One was a letter to the editor so inane it made me laugh and the other was so tragic I almost cried tears of rage. How could these two pieces are related is what made me feel like I absolutely had to write this.

As you know, I have blogged in the past about the stupidity of abstinence-only education and the failure of the so-called virginity pledge. As I have said before I will say again; I agree 100% with Planned Parenthood on the need for comprehensive sex education for children starting in middle school. Time and time again it has been proven the head-in-the-sand abstinence-only approach to sex education does not work. It has been proven that virginity pledges do not work. It has been proven time and time again that the religious right is wrong, so very wrong. Yet, in today's paper is a response to the news piece announcing Mississippi has the highest rate of teen pregnancy. It should come as no surprise the letter was written by a religious education teacher. In it, the letter writer blames teen pregnancies on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Never mind the fact that this so-called sexual revolution is more fantasy than fact, this is the typical response by a bible-thumper. To continue to promote abstinence only as the only way to prevent teen sex and the resulting pregnancies is sadly the modus operandi of the high and mighty Christian Right.

Which brings me to the second story. This can only be a tragic and sad testament to the Christian Right's sexual education campaign. In Dallas, Texas a 6-month-old baby boy is on life support and the courts may decide to pull that life support. This poor innocent precious child is suffering with severe brain damage and 42 skeletal injuries. A doctor noted that the boy's hands and feet appeared to have been pulled, twisted and crushed and that he also had skin injuries including bruises and human bite marks. BITE MARKS and CRUSHED HANDS AND FEET!!!! Evidently the mother and father visited these horrific injuries on their only son. According to the Associated Press the mother and father, ages 23 and 22 respectively, subjected their only child to long-term, extensive physical abuse. Both parents are sitting jail on $500,000 bail each. A court-appointed attorney for the infant boy has filed a motion in Dallas County juvenile court for life-support to be removed. One can only assume this is to spare the baby from any more suffering.

So now I suppose the right wing whacko bible thumpers are going to descend on Dallas en masse to protest this action because, after all, all life is sacred. They will no doubt blame the liberal left for wanting to remove the baby from life support and will also blame the liberals for the child's injuries. It's society's fault, you see. The parents were encouraged to have sex because of the lack of moral values in Hollywood and whatnot. The whackos will undoubtedly not bring up the fact that obviously abstinence only education did not work here. Another fact ignored would be this baby was born because they did not practice birth control which is another big taboo for the whacko bible thumpers. The mother could not have gotten an abortion either, if the whacko right had its way.

You see we can't have abortion, birth control, or sex education because it will encourage kids to have sex; it couldn't possibly be as effective as scaring the living hell out of the kids and telling them to remain abstinent until they are married. Yeah that's an effective education tool and when it doesn't work, we'll just blame the media and the liberals. That's what they are doing today anyway, blaming liberals for the problems they created. This baby's blood is on the Religious Right's hands, they know it and we know it. Keep thumping your bibles and crawl back under your rocks, people; you are being relegated to the obscurity of irrelevance.

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